Wednesday, 28 January 2015

Communicado

Ah, technology.

Once more I am able to converse on the telephone. Once more, I can surf the myriad wonderful shores of the Internet. Once more I can dick about on Facebook. Once more, we discover that life is not like Star Trek.

Last Saturday, about teatime, I was sitting on the comfy sofa, dealing with some mindless nonsense on my iPad, eBay, possibly, when the gloomy message "You are not connected to the Internet" popped up in the middle of my screen. I tried refreshing the screen.

Nope.

I went into Settings and tried to reconnect to the relevant WiFi thingy.

Nope.

I turned it off and on again. The last resort.

Nope. Well, bollocks.

On further investigation (going upstairs and glaring at the blue lights on the BT Homehub box) it was clear that my Internet connection was broken. Mr WithaY emerged from his study, blinking in the light, and asked if there was a problem with the phone, as his Internet wasn't working. A second investigation revealed that the OTHER BT Homehub box (yes, yes, yes, we have two, long story, probably going to get rid of one this year) wasn't working either.

The handset on the phone in the hall displayed the message "Check Line Cord" which we know from experience means Serious Issues With The Phone. As we live in the Village Of No Mobile Reception, we couldn't ring BT to let them know, so left it till the next day, hoping that the phone line might have magically sorted itself out overnight.

I went to work on Sunday morning, and was not particularly surprised when a neighbour from further up the road called in to ask if our phone worked. The shop phone did, but I told him our home phone was out of order.

"So's ours! And all the neighbours' on either side! AND the phone box!" he told me. He'd already been on the (mobile) phone to BT to report the fault, which meant finding a spot at the top of the hill by the church where there's intermittent reception, and then spending almost £10 on his emergency pay as you go mobile whilst BT kept him on hold. He wasn't happy.

One of the more endearing quirks of reporting a fault to BT is their insistence that you listen to their instructions about resolving faults at your end. They ought to call it It's All Your Faults. They insist that you check that your phone isn't unplugged, or the dog hasn't eaten your WiFi box, or the house hasn't burned down while you weren't concentrating, and only then will they agree to send out an engineer. Even then, you have to agree to pay a huge fee (almost £200!) if they find that it's Your Fault.

Anyhoo, the fault had been raised with BT, so I rang them as well, told them that our phones were also affected, and agreed to hand over a huge sack of cash if it turned out not to be their problem. On leaving work, I spotted a BT engineer doing something at the base of the telephone pole on the corner. I wandered over to see.

Me: Hello. Have you come to fix all our phones?

Engineer: Hello. Yes.

Me: So what's the problem?

Engineer: Well. Look.

The engineer gestured at the thick black cable that runs up the length of the phone pole. It had been neatly cut in half about a foot from the ground. A myriad of small wires poked out of the two severed ends.

Me: Ah.

Engineer: (wearily) Yep, this is me for the next couple of hours.

He declined the offer of a cup of tea, so I left him to it. By the time it was dark, his van had gone, and so had he, and the broken cable was all patched back up. However, the phones still weren't working.

I went to work on Monday morning. To my non-astonishment, a neighbour came in to ask if our phone worked. I told her it did, and asked if her's was out of order.

"Not exactly," she told me. "My number is now in Jean's house. And Jean's number is ringing in my house."

Ah.

As more people came into the shop, it became clear that a terrible, terrible thing had happened to our phones. We all had each others' numbers, but nobody knew who had which, or where they were calling. I tried calling both our numbers from the shop phone but they just rang endlessly so I gave up.

Once again, BT were called. Once again I had to agree to give them all my money if the fault was mine. I explained that at least 12 houses were affected, and that it was most likely that the problem rested with the massive severed cable that had been sellotaped back together inaccurately.

Early on Monday morning, a BT engineer appeared at my house. I explained the situation at length.

Me: BT have run line tests and said my phone is fine, but look - there's no dial tone." My voice might have gone a bit squeaky as I waved the dead handset about.

Engineer: (backing away slightly) Ok...so...your phone is dead. And yet we have a good line signal. (He looked at his electronic handset thingy, then back at my dead phone.)

Me: YES. My phone number works, just not in my house!

Engineer: Ok. I'll get on with this then. (More fiddling with his tricorder) Ah, your phone is ringing at a Mr Sanders' house. Do you know him?

Me: (coldly) No.

(He went back out to his van, possibly to have an aspirin.)

An hour or so later, both our phones were working, and we had Internet access once more. Hurrah. The engineer stood on the doorstep chatting cheerfully as we said our goodbyes.

Me: And will you be going to all the other houses now to sort them out too?

Engineer: Um. What other houses?

I told him about all the neighbours' phone issues, and the phone box. He was appalled.

Engineer: I only have two call-outs for today, and neither of them are in this village!

Me: Well, there are at least a dozen houses with this problem. And the phone box.

Engineer: So why haven't they reported them?

Me: No phones! No Internet! No mobile reception!

When I went to work that afternoon, there was a huge BT cherrypicker truck with a bloke deedily reattaching wires at the top of the phone pole. It was there quite a while.

In other news, I am now working full-time in the village shop. I really like it. There's a shift pattern which suits me well, as you do four days on, two days off, so your days off vary from week to week, and even on the days you work you either have a morning or an afternoon to yourself.

The first couple of late shifts I did were nerve-racking, as you have to lock everything and set alarms and so on, but once I got the hang of it, it was fine. It's sociable and friendly, and apart from my feet hurting at the end of a shift - there's nowhere to sit for most of the time - I like it very much. I daresay my feet will adapt.

A customer came in the other day, bought a few bits and pieces, and then gave me a handful of change to pay for it. As he dropped the money into my hand I realised it was sticky. Very, very sticky.